Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Founded (Aug)

In the immediate aftermath of the December 1956
Montgomery Bus Boycott victory, Dr.
King convenes a meeting at Ebenezer Church in Atlanta on January
10-11, 1957. Calling themselves the Southern Leaders Conference on
Transportation and Non-Violent Integration, the 60 Black ministers
from across the South discuss coordinating protests against
segregation, promote nonviolence as a strategy, and provide mutual aid
in time of struggle (seeSouthern Negroes Leaders
Conference Agenda). They issue a
Statement to the South and
Nation.

After discussions with Bayard Rustin, Ralph Abernathy, Joeseph Lowery,
Fred Shuttlesworth, and other advisors, Dr. King convenes a second
meeting in August to form a permanent organization. Initially, the new
organization is named "Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent
Integration" but is soon changed to "Southern Christian Leadership
Conference" (SCLC)

Unlike the NAACP and CORE, where individuals join and work through
local chapters, SCLC is an organization of affiliates which are either
community organizations such as the
Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA) and Alabama
Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACHMR), or individual
churches or other entities. SCLC is governed by an elected Board, and
establishes a small office on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta.

Throughout the South, only a handful of Black churches affiliate with
SCLC. Ministers, deacons, and church elders know that association with
SCLC and Dr. King puts them at grave risk from the Ku Klux Klan and
White Citizens Council  and the state. For
generations, the South has been ruled by a reign of terror, and those
who challenge the status-quo face evictions, firings, boycotts,
beatings, false arrest, church burnings  and death.

There are also deep divisions within the religious community over the
proper role of religion and the church. Many ministers hold that
churches should focus only on the spiritual needs of their
congregation and performing charitable works to aid the needy. Some
view Dr. King and SCLC as dangerous "radicals" because they challenge
segregation and engage in social-political-economic action in the
community and nation. Others take the position that segregation should
be challenged in the courts and that Direct
Action  protests, boycotts,
marches  endanger everyone and make the situation
worse. Over the years that follow, some communities are bitterly
divided between those churches that support the Freedom Movement and
those that urge their members to "stay out of that mess." This
ideologic struggle over the role of religion in secular affairs is
intense, and continues in various forms to this day.

Robert Williams & Armed Self-Defense in Monroe NC

After returning to North Carolina from military service in WWII,
Robert F. Williams organizes the Union County Branch of the NAACP.
After a Black child drowns in an unsupervised swimming-hole in 1957,
they ask that Blacks be allowed to use Monroe's city-owned swimming
pool one day a week. The city council refuses on the grounds that if
Blacks use the pool the water has to be drained and replaced before
white children can use it. Williams leads a group of Black children
who attempt to integrate the tax-supported pool. Monroe is a center of
Ku Klux Klan activity, and they threaten to kill the parents of the
Black children. Williams organizes Black military veterans into armed
self-defense teams. KKK night-riders attack a Black neighborhood but
are driven off.

In 1958, two Black boys (ages 7 and 9) are seen kissing a 9 year old
white girl on the cheek while playing together. They are convicted of
"rape" under North Carolina's anti-miscengenation laws. They are
sentenced to reform school. Williams organizes their legal defense in
what becomes widely known as the "Kissing Case." He brings in a civil
rights lawyer to plead their cause. He also widely publicizes the
case, creating international condemnation of Southern racism. Protest
demonstrations are held in Paris, Rome, Rotterdam, and Vienna to the
embarassment of the U.S. Department of State. Eventually, the federal
government orders the two boys released.

Because he advocates armed self-defense, Williams is suspended by the
NAACP. He responds that he is calling for self-defense, not acts of
war: "We as men should stand up as men and protect our women and
children. I am a man, and I will walk upright as a man should. I will
not crawl." Though he's an advocate of nonviolence, Dr. King
acknowledges that Blacks have a right to defend themselves against
attack, "When the Negro uses force in self-defense he does not
forfeit support  he may even win it, by the courage
and self-respect it reflects."

As part of this action, CORE leads a caravan from Richmond VA to
Washington DC to protest the closing of public schools in Prince
Edward County to avoid court-ordered desegregation.

Drawn from civil rights, religious, labor, and student organizations,
some 30,000 people rally at the Lincoln Memorial. This is the largest
civil rights demonstration up to this time and includes Rev. Fred
Shuttlesworth from Birmingham, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell from Harlem,
singer Harry Belafonte, and in her first (but not her last)
involvement with the Movement, gospel-great Mahalia Jackson sings for
the crowd.

After Fred Shuttlesworth summarizes the
situation in the South, for the first time, Dr.
King rises to give a major civil rights
address — known as the
Give us the Ballot
speech — to a national audience outside of Alabama.

Though the organizers had hoped for 50,000 participants, the crowd's
enthusiasm propelled the event forward. In the words of National
Student Association leader Harold Sim, "The air was filled with
shouts of 'amen' and 'hallelujah' as the speakers sounded their voices
in defense of civil rights. Handkerchiefs flew above the heads of the
crowd as it listened to the fiery orators... They were jubilant
sounds... sounds of disillusioned souls discovering their
country."[3]

Royal Ice Cream Sit-in — Durham, NC (June)

In 1957, the Royal Ice Cream parlor occupies the corner of Dowd and Roxboro
streets in Durham, North Carolina. The main entrance on the corner is for
"Whites Only," the back door on Roxboro is for "Colored." A partition
divides the parlor, separating the races into two sections. The ice cream
is the same for everyone.

On June 23, Rev. Douglas Moore, the 28-year old pastor of Asbury Temple
Methodist Church, leads six young Black men and women into the parlor and
they take seats in the "White" section. Joining Moore are students Mary
Elizabeth Clyburn, Claude Glenn, Jesse Gray, Vivian Jones, Virginia
Williams and Melvin Willis. They are ordered to go sit in "their" section.
Politely, nonviolently, they refuse. They are ordered to leave. They
refuse. The manager calls the cops. They are arrested.

[Historic Note: The term
"sit-in" had not yet come into wide use, so they were initially
identified in the press as "strikers."]

Moore had been a classmate of Martin Luther King at Boston University where
as students they had discussed and argued the use of nonviolent direct
action against segregation. Years later, he explained: "I was more
educated than most of the Whites that segregated against us. I was just
tired of riding on the back of transportations, walking through colored
entrances, sipping out of different water fountains, and made to feel by
other Black folk that it was okay."

The next day the "Royal Seven" are convicted of trespassing and fined $10
plus court costs. According to the prosecutor, segregation laws provide the
legal justification for charging prospective customers with "trespass." The
seven appeal to Superior Court and demand a jury trial. An all-white jury
again convicts them. They appeal to the state Supreme Court which upholds
the guilty verdicts based on segregation ordinances. They appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court which refuses to hear their case. They end up paying
$433 in fines (equal to $3,500 in 2012).

Tuskegee Merchant Boycott (1957-1960)

In the mid-1950s, Macon County Alabama  home of the Tuskegee
Institute (now Tuskegee University)  is 84% Black though few
Blacks are registered to vote. The town of Tuskegee is also overwhelmingly
Black, but whites own all the significant businesses and hold all municipal
offices. The Institute exists as a rare enclave of Afro-American middle-class
life in a town, county, and state where poverty is the norm. Led by Professor
Charles Gomillion, Blacks associated with the Institute begin a voter
registration drive that has some success among the college-educated Institute
community. The number of Black voters eligible to vote in municipal elections
begins to approach that of whites, and in 1954 a Black woman
runs — unsuccessfully — for the school board.

By 1957, Alabama whites are seething with anger at the Supreme Court's ruling
in Brown v Board of Education and
the Montgomery Bus Boycott desegregation
victory. The thought that a town in their state — even one
that is 85% Black — might one day elect an Afro-American
public official is intolerable. To prevent that, the legislature redraws the
Tuskegee town boundaries from a simple square to a twisted, 27-sided,
"gerrymandered" shape that excludes the Institute enclave and all but a
handful of Black voters.

In response to the legislature's action, the Institute's college-educated
Blacks unite with the town's working-poor Blacks. 3,000 Tuskegee citizens
meet at Butler Chapel in June of 1957. Led by Gomillion, they call for a
"Crusade for Citizenship" and launch a economic boycott of the white-owned
stores in Tuskegee. "We are going to buy goods and services from those who
help us, from those who make no effort to hinder us, from those who recognize
us as first-class citizens," states Gomillion.

When the gerrymander came, there was a mass meeting. It was the most
emotional experience I've ever had in my life. It just seemed to finally have
awakened the people in the community. Dean Gomillion had tried in the past to
organize "little trade with your friends," meaning trade with Negroes. We'd
trade with our friends for about a month, and then it would sort of
disintegrate. The new boycott to fight the gerrymander was the first time he
really had massive and prolonged support. (We couldn't call it a boycott, of
course, that was illegal. It had to be "selective buying.") ... I dare say
that our boycott wouldn't have been successful if it were not for the bus
boycott in Montgomery. This was one of the rallying
cries — "Aren't we going to do what the people in Montgomery
did? Are we going to be less proud than the people in
Montgomery?" — Mrs. Louise Washington.
[1]

The boycott lasts three years, with Blacks making the 80-mile round trip to
Montgomery to buy food, clothing, and other necessities. The boycott is
highly effective, with devastating economic consequences for the white
merchants who would rather close their doors than allow Blacks to hold any
share of political power. Some lose 70% of their trade, and 20 go out of
business. The boycott ends in 1960 when the U.S. Supreme Court rules in
Gomillion v. Lightfoot that gerrymandering districts to restrict
Blacks from voting is an unconstitutional violation of the 15th Amendment.

The old Tuskegee town boundaries are restored with Blacks now in the voting
majority. In the next election, middle-class Afro-American leaders associated
with the Institute choose not to support a Black professor running for mayor.
They fear that whites will flee a town controlled by Blacks. "We didn't
wish to control, merely to share," Gomillion tells an interviewer. In
coalition with white "moderates" they elect a white mayor and a city council
of four whites and two Blacks. The national news media and intellectual elite
dub Tuskegee a "model town" of racial harmony.

Nashville "Grade-a-Year" School Desegregation Scheme

The "Brown II" ("All
Deliberate Speed") ruling provided loopholes that local school
districts can use to delay and prevent effective school desegregation
as required by the first
"Brown" decision. One
example is Nashville TN's "Grade-a-Year" desegregation plan.

Under the Nashville Plan, a single grade is to be desegregated each
year, starting with 1st Grade. This means that desegregation will only
apply to students enrolling in 1st Grade the following year, and never
apply to the grade of any child who is already enrolled in a
segregated school. The plan permits parents to transfer their children
out of any school where the majority of students are of a different
race (in other words, white kids will not have to attend a school
where the majority of students are Black). The Board of Education then
gerrymanders the school district boundaries so that only a small
fraction of Black children are eligible to enroll in the 1st Grade of
a formerly all-white school.

A number of Southern school systems copy or adapt the Nashville Plan.
Other systems use other methods to evade real desegregation using the
loopholes opened by "Brown
II."

Crusade for Citizenship — SCLC

(To be written.)

Civil Rights Act of 1957 (August)

The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is debated and passed in the context of an
awakening freedom movement — the bus boycotts in
Montgomery,
Talahassee, and other cities, the
voting struggle in Tuskegee, the
Brown and
"Brown II" decisions, the
Massive Resistance campaign, and the
looming desegregation crises in Little Rock, along
with many other events. This young movement is beginning to focus public
attention on issues of race, rights, and justice that Congress has avoided
since the end of Reconstruction in 1876.

Politically, it has been more than 80 years since any civil rights
legislation has been enacted into law. After Reconstruction, the "Jim
Crow" system of anti-Black segregation, voter disenfranchisement, and denial
of fundamental human rights was imposed across the South (and other
regions). All efforts to pass federal, race-related civil rights legislation
that would in any way limit white supremacy (such as anti-lynching laws or
the repeal of poll-taxes) have been blocked in the Senate by Southern
filibusters.

In 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) is preparing his
run for the Presidency in 1960. In his 20 years in office, Johnson has never
voted for a civil rights bill or amendment. But with the fledgling Freedom
Movement beginning to stir, he knows that he cannot win the Democratic
nomination if he is seen in the North as opposing civil rights for Blacks.
Yet to win the nomination he also needs the support of the "solid
South"  the segregationists.

In March of 1957, Eisenhower's Attorney General proposes a civil
rights bill that strengthens the federal government's ability to
protect civil rights, permits moving civil rights cases from state to
federal court, authorizes the Justice Department to file lawsuits to
protect civil rights, prevents interference with the right to vote,
and applies federal election law to primaries and special elections.
The draft bill has broad bipartisan support from Republicans and Northern
Democrats.

Using his power as "Master of the Senate," LBJ maneuvers to gut the bill of
all significant provisions. Most significantly, he strips out Title III.
This section empowers the federal government to act on its own to enforce
court orders and previous civil rights legislation. It would allow the
Justice Department to file civil rights suits on behalf of the public, move
civil rights related cases from state to federal court, and give the U.S.
government the power to intervene directly in southern racial issues.

Without that power, the Attorney General cannot take action against racial
discrimination until someone files a lawsuit in federal court. A main
purpose of the White Citizens Council is
to keep Blacks from doing just that. Blacks who petition a court for racial
justice in the South face economic retaliation, beatings, false arrests on
trumped up charges, bombings, burnings, and lynching. If no one dares file
an enforcement suit, the laws have no effect, and therefore Constitutional
protections of Black civil rights are nullified. In other words, without
Title III the bill is toothless.

Johnson also eviscerates Part IV which allows contempt of court orders and
injunctions to restrain or prevent those who intimidate, threaten, or coerce
voters or potential voters. He does this by adding a special provision that
anyone brought to court under this section can demand a jury trial (which is
normally not the case in federal civil actions). Since Blacks are
systematically excluded from southern juries, and all-white juries almost
never rule against other whites in race-related cases, this "jury-trial"
clause effectively guts Title IV.

With the bill now so watered down to the point of being meaningless, he
convinces the Southern senators that it is better to allow a sham bill to
pass without a filibuster rather than risk the outside chance that growing
public support for civil rights might be strong enough to break the
filibuster and pass a real bill that might actually provide some protection
for Blacks. This strategy allows him to pose as a civil rights supporter in
the North when he seeks the 1960 nomination, while still retaining the
"solid-South" support of the segregationists.

At the end of August, the Civil Rights Act 1957 is passed by Congress and
signed into law. From the point of view of the Civil Rights Movement, it's
two main provisions:

Create a U.S Commission on Civil Rights to study and report on civil
rights matters.

Clarify that U.S. federal courts have jurisdiction over issues related
to denial of voting rights.

Though recognizing that passing any race-related civil rights bill is an
achievement in itself, most Movement supporters consider the bill "a crumb"
and "worse than nothing." Though touted by Johnson as a "voting rights
bill," the reality is that fewer Blacks vote in the 1960 election than had
voted in 1956. Yet, despite its weaknesses, passage of this national voting
rights legislation does reaffirm and strengthen the legal premis that we are
all citizens of the nation rather than citizens of the individual states,
and that national law can preempt and override state laws regarding voting.

And the law of unintended consequences remains in full force. Though neither
LBJ nor anyone else ever intended it, the clause granting federal courts
jurisdiction over matters related to voting rights ends up providing crucial
protection for civil rights workers in the 1960s. When field organizers
working on voter registration campaigns in the Deep South are falsely
arrested on trumped up charges, the Justice Department is able to transfer
the cases to federal court where they disappear. Similarly, when young
nonviolent protesters are unjustly arrested, and some connection to voting
rights can be made, their cases too are diverted and eventually dropped. The
result is that in most situations local sheriffs are unable to halt the
Freedom Movement by imprisoning civil rights activists on phoney charges.

Seven years later, the Civil Rights Act of
1964 is passed. It contains many of the provisions gutted out of the
1957 Act. But during the seven years between 1957 and 1964, many are killed
for demanding the right to vote, hundreds are beaten, thousands jailed, and
tens of thousands suffer economic retaliation in the struggle for basic
human dignity. The federal government says it does not have the legal
authority to stop civil rights abuses. Movement lawyers dispute their claim
that they lack legal means to protect American citizens  and
most Movement veterans believe that the cause of federal inaction is
political rather than lack of adequate laws  but there is no
doubt that had the Civil Rights Act of 1957 been passed in its original
form, much of the loss and suffering endured by those who fought for freedom
might have been prevented.

For more information:
Book: Part V of Master of the Senate, by Robert Caro. Vintage, 2002
Web: Civil Rights Act  1957

The Little Rock Nine (September)

By 1957, "Massive Resistance" to the
Brown school desegregation
decision is widespread across the South. In Arkansas, NAACP President
Daisy Bates organizes the Black community against the Little Rock
school board's "All Deliberate
Speed" stalling tactics. They force the board to allow a small
number of Blacks to enroll in previously all-white Central High School
when it opens in September.

Nine courageous Black teenagers volunteer to integrate Central High.
Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed,
Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and
Carlotta Walls become known as the "Little Rock Nine." But in truth,
they should be known as the "Little Rock Ten" because Daisy Bates
stands by them, guides them, protects them, and endures with them the
ordeal that follows.

I wanted to go to Central High School because they had more
privileges. They had more equipment, they had five floors of
opportunities. I understood education before I understood anything
else. From the time I was two, my mother said, "You will go to
college. Education is your key to survival," and I understood that. It
was a kind of curiosity, not an overwhelming desire to go to this
school and integrate this school and change history. Oh no, there was
none of that. I just thought it'd be fun to go to this school I ride
by every day. I want to know what's in there. I don't necessarily want
to be with those people; I assumed that being with those people would
be no different than being with people I was already
with. — Melba Paitillo Beals.
[2]

The segregationist White Citizens
Council and racist politicians whip up mass hysteria against the
plan to desegregate an Arkansas public school. On the first day of
school, Governor Orval Faubus orders the state's National Guard to
surround Central High and prevent the Black students from entering.
NAACP attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton win a federal
court ruling ordering that the Nine be admitted. Faubus refuses to
obey the order. After 18 days of futile negotiation with Faubus,
President Eisenhower finally federalizes the National Guard and orders
them to allow the Little Rock Nine to attend class.

The following day a huge crowd of angry whites surround the school
determined to prevent any Black child from attending. Violence breaks
out when Elizabeth Eckford approaches the building. She is jeered,
taunted, and threatened by the mob. The Arkansas National Guard do
nothing to protect either her or Black journalists who are viciously
attacked and beaten. Eckford's courage, and her grace under fire,
become a symbol of pride and determination for a generation of Black
youth.

The morning that we went to school, Daisy [Bates] had called us all
up to meet at her house. And eight of us showed up. Elizabeth had
missed the call — she didn't have a phone, I
think — so she wasn't there. ... So that morning, we
went by car to Central. We got to school. We were at one end of the
school, 14th Street, and Elizabeth was at the other end, 16th Street,
neither group knowing where the other was. Because it's a big place.
Two blocks separating it. And we just made a cursory kind of attempt
to enter school, but we were denied access. Elizabeth attempted to go
through the guards and have the mobs behind her. It had to be the most
frightening thing, because she had a crowd of a hundred, two hundred,
white people threatening to kill her. She had nobody. I mean, there
was not a black face in sight anywhere. Nobody that she could turn to
as a friend except this white woman, Grace Lorch, came out of a crowd
and guided her through the mob and onto the bus and got her home
safely. None of us knew that until we met at Daisy's house. Elizabeth
was there; she was in tears. The rest of us had not experienced
anything like that. — Ernest Green.
[2]

The next day the mob is even more violent. The Nine have to be taken
out of school when the Little Rock police cannot protect them.

The first day I was able to enter Central High School, what I felt
inside was terrible, wrenching, awful fear. On the car radio I could
hear that there was a mob. I knew what a mob meant and I knew that the
sounds that came from the crowd were very angry. So we entered the
side of the building, very, very fast. Even as we entered there were
people running after us, people tripping other people. Once we got
into the school, it was very dark; it was like a deep, dark
castle. ... There has never been in my life any stark terror or any
fear akin to that. I'd only been in the school a couple of hours and
by that time it was apparent that the mob was just overrunning the
school. Policemen were throwing down their badges and the mob was
getting past the wooden sawhorses because the police would no longer
fight their own in order to protect us.

So we were all called into the principal's office, and there was great
fear that we would not get out of this building. We were trapped. And
I thought, Okay, so I'm going to die here, in school. And I remember
thinking back to what I'd been told, to understand the realities of
where you are and pray. Even the adults, the school officials, were
panicked, feeling like there was no protection. A couple of kids, the
black kids, that were with me were crying, and someone made a
suggestion that if they allowed the mob to hang one kid, they could
then get the rest out. And a gentleman, who I believed to be the
police chief, said, "Unh-uh, how are you going to choose? You're going
to let them draw straws?" He said, "I'll get them out."

And we were taken to the basement of this place. And we were put into
two cars, grayish blue Fords. And the man instructed the drivers, he
said, "Once you start driving, do not stop." And he told us to put our
heads down. This guy rewed up his engine and he came up out of the
bowels of this building, and as he came up, I could just see hands
reaching across this car, I could hear the yelling, I could see guns,
and he was told not to stop. "If you hit somebody, you keep rolling,
'cause the kids are dead." And he did just that, and he didn't hit
anybody, but he certainly was forceful and aggressive in the way he
exited this driveway, because people tried to stop him and he didn't
stop. He dropped me off at home. And I remember saying, "Thank you for
the ride," and I should've said, "Thank you for my
life." — Melba Patillo Beals.
[2]

The chief of police requests assistance from the U.S. Department of
Justice. Eisenhower sends 1,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne
Division to carry out the orders of the federal courts, and protect
nine Black children from racist violence. Governor Faubus labels the
soldiers an "army of occupation."

Parents of the Little Rock Nine are pressured to withdraw their
children from the "white" school. They are threatened with death. Four
loose their jobs. But they stand tall and none back down. Applying a
tactic used across the South to
attack the NAACP, the Little Rock
city council orders the arrest of Daisy Bates and other NAACP leaders
for refusing to turn over NAACP membership lists and financial data to
a government agency (who will then pass it on to the White Citizens
Council for economic retaliation).

Inside Central High, day after day, the Little Rock Nine endure cruel
hardship and abuse from the white students  beatings,
shoving, jeers, insults, and constant humiliation. Their lockers are
destroyed and fireballs thrown at them in the restrooms. A lighted
stick of dynamite is hurled at Melba Pattillo, she is stabbed, and
acid is sprayed in her eyes. Only the quick action of a soldier from
the 101st saves her from being permanently blinded.

For a couple of weeks there had been a number of white kids
following us, continuously calling us niggers. "Nigger, nigger, nigger
," one right after the other. Minniejean Brown was in the lunch line
with me. I was in front of Minnie, and there was this white kid, a
fellow who was much shorter than Minnie. Minnie was about five foot
ten. This fellow couldn't have been more than five five, five four. He
reminded me of a small dog, yelping at somebody's leg. Minnie had just
picked up her chili, out of this line. The help in the whole cafeteria
was black, all black. And before I could even say, "Minnie, why don't
you tell him to shut yup," Minnie had taken this chili, dumped it on
this dude's head.

There was just absolute silence in the place. And then the help, all
black, broke into applause. And the other white kids there didn't know
what to do. I mean it was the first time that anybody, I'm sure, had
seen somebody black retaliate in that sense. It was a good feeling to
see that happen, to be able to let them know that we were capable of
taking care of ourselves. With that the school board suspended Minnie.
Part of it was the attitude at that time, which was somehow we were
supposed to be so stoic that we weren't to retaliate to any of this.
Finally, after the suspension, they moved to remove her from school,
and Minnie went to school in New York, finished up the other semester
outside of Little Rock. — Ernest Green.
[2]

Over the following years, throughout the South thousands of other
Black children endure similar humiliation, vicious abuse, and cruel
injustice when they in their turn are the first Blacks to integrate an
all-white school. These school integrators are the unsung heroes and
heroines of the Freedom Movement (see alsoIntegrating Americus High
School).

The next year, before the September 1958 term begins, Faubus and the
state legislature pass a law allowing the Governor to shut down
schools and lease them to "private school" corporations as a way of
preventing integration. He closes all of Little Rock's high schools.
In a referendum where few Blacks are eligible to vote, Little Rock's
white citizens support Faubus and oppose integration by a vote of
130,000 to 7,500.

Under intense pressure, two of the Little Rock Nine families are
forced to move away. With Ernest Green graduated and the expelled
Minnijean Brown now attending Lincoln High in New York, the five
remaining students take corresponence courses while waiting for the
courts to reopen the schools. A year later (June 1959) the
school-closing law is declared unconstitutional and the high schools
are reopened for the Fall 1959 term. The five remaining Little Rock
Nine students eventually graduate from formerly white-only high
schools. But it is not until 1972  18 years after the
Brown decision and 15 years after the crises at Central
High  that all Little Rock public schools are finally
integrated.